Microsoft co-founder sues Apple, 10 other companies

Another day, another lawsuit. A tech licensing company controlled by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is suing 11 companies, including Apple, for violating patents on “fundamental web technologies” developed by Interval Research, the now-defunct Silicon Valley lab that Allen created with Xerox PARC veteran David Liddle in the 1990s, reports “TechFlash” (http://macosg.me/2/sr).

In addition to Apple, Facebook, Office Depot, Yahoo, YouTube, Netflix and eBay are being targeted. Microsoft isn’t on the list.

A total of four Interval Research patents are cited in the complaint, which seeks unspecified monetary damages for alleged patent infringement. In a statement this morning, Allen’s firm calls the patents at issue in the suit “fundamental to the ways that leading e-commerce and search companies operate today,” says “TechFlash.”

The patents cited in the suit include one for a “Browser for use in navigating a body of information, with particular application to browsing information represented by audiovisual data”; two patents for an “Attention manager for occupying the peripheral attention of a person in the vicinity of a display device”; and one for “Alerting users to items of current interest.”